


support all those who stumble and straighten all those who are bent

by jonphaedrus



Category: Fire Emblem: Soen no Kiseki/Akatsuki no Megami | Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn
Genre: Blood, Canon Compliant, Falling In Love, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2019-03-06 23:21:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13421781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonphaedrus/pseuds/jonphaedrus
Summary: “Use the tool best sorted for the purpose.” He looks to Sephiran, and wonders,isn’t that why you chose me?





	support all those who stumble and straighten all those who are bent

**Author's Note:**

> itsys you cant add TWO zelgiuses to feh and NOT add sephiran. what kind of bullshit is this. where is his boyfriend! give him his boyfriend! who do you think you are, separating them like this?
> 
> fine. if i cant make them get s-ranked in feh ill make my own fucking s rank supports fuck you intsys. someone has to do it and it may as well be me.
> 
> title is from [the ashrei](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashrei), from the line starting with ס, samech, which is roughly analogous in pronunciation and alphabetical placement to the english "s". for s support.

c.

It’s a very long way from Daein to Begnion on foot. Sephiran eschews any sort of faster form of travel—no horses, no wyverns, no caravans, no merchants, no boats. He insists upon foot. There is something about the simple, quiet way that he demands it that makes Zelgius think better of questioning it.

It is a long walk, but he has no shortage of time. After all, Zelgius is not a human man, and nobody is waiting for him, at either end. The only person he has in the whole entire world is right here beside him.

 

 

Three weeks into their journey, a late summer rain has washed out a bridge, and they are trapped, camping with a small group of merchants at the side of a gorge. Sephiran and Zelgius have pitched their tent far enough away from their fellow travelers to preserve their privacy, and under the constant drizzling rain, a chill has begun to set in. So, Zelgius is chopping wood, since they’ve heard that it may take another half a week or more for Daein to fix the bridge.

Zelgius picks up the split log he’s just finished chopping, and tosses the quarters into the tent to get them out of the rain to dry out. Tonight Sephiran will put them into the small potbelly stove they’ve rented from the merchants until they move on, for them to huddle around at night. He picks up another log, and places it onto the stump he’s chopping on, hefts up the axe, and brings it down over his head into the log, the crack of the wood splitting halfway down the middle loud in the drizzly silence.

Sephiran is sitting just inside the tent, legs folded under him, watching Zelgius. Zelgius can feel the other man’s eyes on him. It’s hard work, splitting logs, and its been some years since he had to do it, so he’s sweating—stripped as much as he can, down to his undershirt.

Were they alone, he would bare that too. But there is a Brand on his back he cannot reveal, and he keeps it hidden, sweats through the white cotton.

“You’re obviously quite skilled with an axe,” Sephiran says, and Zelgius pauses, looking up, lowering the axe from where it’s above his head, getting ready to swing. “And I don’t just say that because you can split wood. You don’t line up your strikes—you haven’t missed a single one. Your speed is remarkable. Why do you choose to fight with a sword?”

Zelgius reaches for the handkerchief he’s tucked into the waistband of his breeches, trying to keep it from getting soaked in the rain, and wipes sweat and raindrops off of his forehead, drags his fingers through his waterlogged bangs to straighten them. He needs his hair cut.

“I prefer it,” Zelgius settles on. He hefts the axe in one hand, turns it back and forth. “An axe has little finesse. An axe kills. And,” he lifts the axe, strikes the stump, sticks the axe into it. “It is a tool. Yes, a battle axe is a weapon. But an axe is a _tool_. It cuts. It breaks. A sword is a _weapon_.” He wipes off the rest of his face, stretches, loosening the muscles of his arm. “Use the tool best sorted for the purpose.” He looks to Sephiran, and wonders, _isn’t that why you chose me?_

Sephiran is watching him. Zelgius gestures to the other man. “Could you strike a man with your staff, if you did not have a tome at hand?”

“Yes,” Sephiran replies, half-smiling. “But it would be a pointless waste of effort. Only the most foolish of mages would be struck down by such a blow.”

“Thats my point. An axe is not the tool meant for that purpose. A sword is.” Zelgius pauses. “A sword has majesty about it. To fight with a sword is to give your enemy respect, honor. You’re showing you take them seriously.”

“It’s an interesting perspective, I will give you. I’m not so sure I agree with you, though. Axes have been weapons as long as they have been axes.” Sephiran’s smile grows. “But I can give you that swords do have a certain respectability about them. But then, why not chop wood with a sword?”

Zelgius bends down, grabs the log. “Why not with my hands?” He says, grabs either side of the log, and _pulls_. It strains in his chest and shoulders and biceps for a moment, force and power building up, and then he gets enough leverage and the log splits the rest of the way down the middle and he rocks, balancing, holding the halves up so Sephiran can see them. “It’s not the tool for the job,” he finishes.

Sephiran is staring at him, silent. His smile has faltered, just slightly. “Like a staff,” he says. He is watching Zelgius strangely, like he is looking straight through him. Or, no, _into_ him, like he can peel back the layers of Zelgius’ body, clothes and flesh and muscle and bone, to look into his mind, and see some secret Zelgius is not meaning to keep from him. “Zelgius,” Sephiran says, and Zelgius resists the urge to shudder. There’s something about the way that Sephiran says his name that makes him feel painfully young again—something he has not felt in a long time.

No.

Perhaps not young.

 _Naïve_.

“How old are you?” Sephiran asks. Zelgius shifts, glances away from his pale eyes. “In troth. You have lived, what, fifteen years in Daein?”

“Seventy-eight, my Lord.” Zelgius admits, rubbing the back of his neck. “Seventy-nine in the autumn.” He _feels_ like an adult, albeit still a fairly young one—he does not know how long he will actually live, should battle not steal him to death sooner. He has his own guesses about where his brand came from, but he has no idea what Laguz was laid with in the past, how long ago, how much his blood has diluted. He knows his parents are his own, but doesn’t know if it was his grandparents, his great, or even, ten generations before. He never _will_ know, either. But his body is still as to that of a man in his early thirties, by his best guess. He is in his prime, at the height of his skill. He was of equal in age, almost, to Gawain. If he had been as he looked.

“So old,” Sephiran murmurs. “So young.”

“My Lord?” Zelgius questions. He can taste the hesitancy in the air—he can almost smell the secrets that weigh his Sage’s shoulders down. “Master?”

Sephiran shakes his head. “My apologies, Zelgius. I oft forget how quickly time passes.” He smiles again, but this time it is paper and paste upon his pale skin. “But I am glad to know that I may have you at my side, for many long years to come.”

Zelgius looks away, ducks his head, and goes back to chopping wood in order to hide his flush.

 

 

b.

The Duke of Persis is the youngest Senator in Begnion, a mean beautiful and etherial, with pale, soft skin, slender hands and wrists, and dark hair. He dresses finely, but within his means, and his family estates are, albeit slightly out of fashion in decoration, still immaculately kept. His personal army is less than three hundred men total, almost nothing in comparison to that of his fellow senators, but it only recently became a Senatorial Army, after all. Before the last few years, it was only a house guard.

The men that Zelgius is placed in charge of are not fractious, but they are undisciplined, and not yet well-trained. They are good at what they do—guarding a keep—but they are not going to be a part of the Begnion army of any worth. They will die immediately in any sort of real battlefield combat.

Zelgius has never been afraid of hard work.

He earns their respect, and begins to whip them into shape.

 

 

He has been with Sephiran three years when Sephiran returns home from Sienne, accompanied by his three bodyguards. There is a shuffling of rank, and Zelgius is prompted, to head of the Persis men-at-arms, rather than just the house guard. His position moves.

He will be going to Sienne, with Sephiran.

His introduction into Begnion society is made with almost no fanfare. Sephiran is still the most junior Senator—he has held the title for only four years, after all—and while his attendance at events is mandatory, he remains overlooked. At first, Zelgius becomes angry. He _wants_ to stand in Sephiran’s shadow, attend him, in public, in private. But when the other Begnion senators (grown fat literally or metaphorically on wealth and corruption) look down their noses at him even as they crane their necks up, Zelgius becomes angry.

Zelgius is no-one, a blank slate, a rank-and-file helmet that is faceless, nameless, useless. They ignore him. But he grinds his teeth and _hates_. Some night, after some party, Senators laughing at Sephiran, not _with_ him, he throws his helmet down to the table when he returns to Sephiran’s rooms, his shoulders hunched up to his ears, shaking with fury. Soon it will be time for shift to change, for Zelgius to sleep in the guard barracks, but for now—

Sephiran closes the door, quietly. “You are ill at ease,” he says. Zelgius takes a deep breath and slowly lets it out, trying to control, to calm, his anger. He must be as still as Sephiran. He _must_. Else, Begnion will eat him alive. “What is it that weighs on you?”

“The way these people treat you,” Zelgius says, when he can trust himself to speak, can rely on his voice to not shake. “They talk as if you don’t stand before them. They push you around like you can’t fight back. It _sickens_ me.” He stares at his hands, encased in padding and leather gloves and chain and mail. “It makes me want to wring their necks, my Lord. You are worth more than the scum on the soles of their priceless leather boots. They should be bowing to you.”

Sephiran’s laugh is like the tinkling of bells. Rarely does Zelgius hear it, but each time he does it reminds him of the soft chimes of bird calls at dawn. He comes up behind Zelgius, sets his hands upon Zelgius’ shoulders. Sephiran’s hands are slim, with tapered, slender fingers. Tonight he is wearing gloves, fawn-leather, pale and supple. Zelgius looks down at the fingers of Sephiran’s left hand.

“Oh, Zelgius,” he says, and laughs again. Zelgius feels like it should be mocking, but it isn’t. Just hearing Sephiran’s laugh, to know that he has given his Master something of worth and delight, has the tension seeping out of his muscles. “I am still the youngest senator. I have no political power. Why should they care for what I say?” Zelgius turns to face Sephiran. Their eyes are almost exactly on a level.

“Yet,” he replies. Sephiran smiles and, for once, it reaches his glittering ice-chip eyes. Zelgius might not yet know what it is Sephiran is planning, but he knows that his Sage is not merely living as a Senator, pretending to be a man of a fraction of his years, for no purpose other than to try it out for style.

He is not, of course, a beorc. How anybody could ever think otherwise is foolishness.

Sephiran cups Zelgius’ cheek. His smile grows, and it is strangely cold on his handsome face. “Yet.”

 

 

a.

By the time that Zelgius has dislocated his shoulder and broken his wrist to get out of the bindings that held him still, moving slowly after his drugging, the scream that rung out from Sephiran’s room has gone, abruptly, awful. Silent.

He doesn’t bother with the handle. Zelgius kicks down the door. He doesn’t have his sword, but he barrels in, using his already-injured shoulder to tackle the first assassin, grabbing her by the neck and jerking her sideways until the bones of her spine snap and she goes limp, falling to the floor in a heap. The next slices at him, quick knifework, and Zelgius ignores the potential dangers of it, just grabs his wrist, takes a narrow cut up his forearm, and snaps the man’s wrist.

He howls in pain. Zelgius knees him in the stomach, grabs him by the back of his collar when he doubles over, turns, lets centrifugal force give him strength, and smashes the man’s head into the wall.

It only takes one strike, and he goes still before Zelgius lets him drop.  
The last is a mage of some sort, and Zelgius growls in pain as the magic buffets him, flames licking over his exposed skin. Zelgius grabs at the nearest thing that could be a weapon—a fine statue of steel and gold, pointed, finely fluted—and throws it. It spears the mage through the stomach and she drops, writhing, screaming, until Zelgius goes to her and lifts his foot, stomps on her throat.

Shaking, adrenaline making him jumpy and pain making him wary, Zelgius almost stumbles as he rushes to the edge of the bed. Sephiran still has one hand up on the mattress, holding his torso off of the floor, the other pressed to his chest.

There is blood everywhere. All over his hands, his nightshirt, his mantle. He is warm, but still, and in the light from his taper, his green eyes are glassy and unseeing. Zelgius feels sick. His good hand is trembling so violently that he cannot still it, and he, slowly, sinks to his knees. The sound of his greaves hitting the ground is loud in the silent room.

“My Lord Sage?” He whispers. Sephiran does not answer. Zelgius lifts his good hand, tugs the laces of his vambrace free with his teeth, pulls the glove off in the same way, and holds his bare hand in front of Sephiran’s nose and mouth. He holds his breath, like it will somehow make it easier to feel Sephiran’s.

There is nothing at all.

He’s dead.

The whole world comes crashing down around him, one ceiling tile at a time. Zelgius’ vision is blacked out but for where he’s staring at Sephiran’s hand, pressed to his chest as if to stem the bleeding. It was not enough. The blood is still sluggishly oozing over his fingers. After a moment, Sephiran’s hand falls, limp, to hang at his side. Zelgius tries to breathe, but no air will come into his nose or mouth; his lungs are as still as Sephiran’s own. He tries to scream but his jaw is locked shut so tight he cannot move it.

Sephiran is dead. _Sephiran is dead._ “My Lord?” Zelgius finally manages, when he can open his mouth. He tries. Yes—if he pretends it is normal, this is normal, it will. It will not be happening. He can taste bile at the back of his throat. His head is pounding. His injured arm feels like someone has rammed a sword in the heel of his palm and the point of it is thrust through his shoulder joint. Sephiran still does not stir. Zelgius needs to move. He needs to do something. He needs. He needs to. Throw up.

All he wants to do is scream. Perhaps there is still time to die and join him. He has only been with Sephiran for five years, his loyal servant, but in that time, the very idea that Sephiran could leave him—he has lived so long. Zelgius does not have to have Sephiran’s assurances that this is true. No, he _knows_ it, simply and with certainty. Sephiran is older than he is. Sephiran will outlive him. For once, Zelgius is not alone, chasing twilight. There will be someone there after him.

“Sephiran?” He whispers at last. His voice, a hoarse, croaking whisper, cracks.

In five years, he has never said Sephiran’s name once. He has guarded it jealously, even when the rest of the world knows it. Something of Sephiran’s that he has given in trade for all that Zelgius has offered him, and it is more than enough. It is a hundred times more than enough.

When Sephiran does not respond, Zelgius slumps the rest of the way down, picks up Sephiran’s bloodied hand and presses it to his face, smearing Sephiran’s blood to his forehead and cheek, and begins to cry. They are ugly, hot sobs. They burn his eyes and cheeks, and each makes the bile grow higher in his throat. He chokes on it, chokes on air, doubling over, nearly hyperventilating. He’s going to be sick.

He has had one job worth doing in his life, and it has been guarding Sephiran. And he cannot even do this properly.

And, in the cacophony of his wracking sobs, the end of his world, small and unprepossessing as it may be, simple and unimportant, there is a very quiet intake of breath. So silent he almost misses it; assumes he has imagined it. He isn’t breathing properly, each breath catching high in his throat and turning into a keening whine from the heart of him. Soon, Zelgius knows, the lack of air will make him pass out.

“Zelgius?” Sephiran says, very softly.

Zelgius looks up, and moves just in time to catch Sephiran as he slides the rest of the way off of the bed to the floor, grabbing at his elbow and then, when his head lolls bonelessly to the side, steadies him with his hand on the slope of his neck before he strikes the flagstones. His skin is cool to the touch; icy. His movements are strange and mechanical. Zelgius shifts forward, twisting to get his legs free from under him, nudges Sephiran’s knees up so that the other man can collapse into Zelgius’ good arm, as helpless as a child.

Beneath Zelgius’ bare fingers, on the side of Sephiran’s neck, he can feel a very soft, faint pulse. One that was not there moments before.

“Oh, Zelgius,” Sephiran murmurs it, naught more than a single puff of air from his pale, soft lips, parted as he breathes. “My dear.”

He once called Zelgius _dear child_ , before they had grown to know one another. Now he calls Zelgius _my dear_ or, before others, _dear General_ , now that Zelgius has claim to the title. He was meant to leave Sienne to take control of what is now the Duke of Persis’ segment of the standing army. He will not be doing that now.

“I’m sorry,” Sephiran whispers, his head pillowed against Zelgius’ forearm. He does not elaborate for a time, and Zelgius ignores his own body’s needs—his hyperventilation, the agony in his injured arm that will surely set into being shock soon, his pounding heart rate, his panic—and focuses just on Sephiran. Slowly, as soon as he seems capable of it, Zelgius helps the other man sit up, to lean against the side of the bed. He sprawls, arms and legs akimbo, and watches Zelgius with cracked eyes. Each breath seems to be an effort as great as the weight of the world, and Zelgius watches him, hand on Sephiran’s knee, terrified if he lets go that—that he will be imagining this, in his shock and horror.

“I had not,” Sephiran says at last, “Thought you would awaken in time to find me. I see,” his lips tilt slightly, and then the energy required for the expression saps back out of him, his face goes slack and unresisting again, “That once again, I have underestimated you.”

“The dose,” Zelgius finally trusts his voice. It comes out shattered, destroyed. He has ravaged his throat with his screams. “Was for a beorc.”

“Ah,” Sephiran breathes. “Of course.”

They still for some time longer.

“Your questions—” Sephiran begins, and Zelgius clears his throat.

“Later. I don’t—I don’t care,” he says, and it startles him how _true_ it is. He really doesn’t care. He doesn’t care at all. Sephiran is. _Here_ , still here, still with him. “I don’t care why you live, Sephiran. Just that you do.” Sephiran nods, very slightly.

“I believe I can, however, give you some insight.” Zelgius looks up at him, finds that Sephiran has pressed the fingers of one hand to his breast, to the injury. He unbuttons the collar of his nightshirt slightly, and for the first time, Zelgius sees more of his Sage than just his wrists and neck. He sees the vulnerable hollow of Sephiran’s throat, the fine arcs of his collarbones, the pale shadow of his sternum. Instead of hair upon his chest there seems to be the finest of down, small, soft feathers dusting the very bottom of his sternum, along the tops of his pectorals. His breasts are veined alabaster, moonlight-bright and pure, and for the lack of muscle, he is all the more beautiful. Sephiran is a statue. More than. He is perfect, he is perfect.

The strike went in just between the ribs right under his left nipple—a dark tan, hard from the chill of the bedroom, the fire banking with how little it has been stoked—and the mark is ugly and red against Sephiran’s skin. But it is accompanied by a dozen others, in the same spot, or at the rib below, or the rib above. Old scars, greying and ropy and nothing near faded.

Zelgius recognizes that this one, too, will fade in time, to be lost among its fellows. Sephiran feels it with his fingertips, closes his eyes.

“Lehran,” Sephiran says, very softly. Zelgius looks up at his face. “My true name is Lehran.”

“Yes,” Zelgius replies. Of course; of course it is. Who else could his Sage be? Who but Lehran? Who but the lost King, the lost speaker of the Goddess?

“I cannot die,” Sephiran says. “Not until the Goddess awakens and judges Tellius.”

“Destroys it,” Zelgius says, not-quite-disbelieving. Sephiran nods, very slightly, again. He drops his hand, and it falls to hang at his side, still limp. “She will destroy Tellius, and all those still on it.”

“Yes,” Sephiran says. His eyes glitter, cold as ice and steel again. Zelgius wants, so badly it eclipses all his other pains, to kiss Sephiran. He wants to take Sephiran’s face in his hands and kiss him, slowly, kiss away any hurts he can. Kiss him until the world falls apart, so it is the last thing either of them remembers when the floodwaters rise a second time and swallow what little earth remains to mortalkind. “For that purpose, I chose you. To help me. No finer General lives.” Zelgius wishes to say _except, perhaps, Gawain_ , but if Gawain lives, Zelgius knows that is no longer true. He has surpassed the man now. There is none his equal.

He will, sooner than later, lead all the armies of Begnion. They will be loyal to the point of foolishness. They will follow his every order.

As he will follow Sephiran’s.

“What other solution is there?” Zelgius says, his mouth strange around the words. He has never considered it, but now he sees it—there is no other options. “Tellius must die.”

Sephiran—his Sage, _Lehran_ —smiles. Closes his eyes. Takes Zelgius’ good hand in his own, and they hold tight to one another. Zelgius bows his head, kneeling before Sephiran on the floor, and lifts his hand to press a kiss to his knuckles.

“If you wish it,” Zelgius says, the words swallowed up by Sephiran’s cold, pale skin, secrets with power beyond imagining, imparted and lost in the cool dark anonymity of night in a room full of dead beorc who will never speak of what they hear, “So mote it be.”

Sephiran lifts his chin, and leans down, and kisses his forehead, and Zelgius—

Begins to cry.

 

 

 

 

s.

When Sephiran is at last recovered, Zelgius takes his promised role in the field. Loathe as he is, he goes. He knows that he is of more use to Sephiran, to the cause, making a name for himself. So he goes.

In the end, Zelgius leads as Sephiran’s only general, taking almost twenty thousand Begnion soldiers when the only other General with him is shot dead by an archer, an arrow buried shaft-deep in his throat. Zelgius gathers the shredded army and turns them against the feral laguz who are fighting tooth and nail for life.

He does not feel anything like glory as he cuts them down. He feels sick. He knows, of course, that it is for the greater good—these laguz must die so that the world can be at peace. So that more can die. An endless cycle until there is no-one left to kill.

But they are still his Sage’s people: their blood still burns Zelgius’ blade. It is just like Daein. It is terrible in all of Tellius now, and Sephiran, he knows, is right.

He and his men, in the end, hold a bridge over a gorge, against nearly two hundred feral, furious laguz. A quarter of his men die, another half injured, and he and his lieutenants personally hold the line for almost six hours until the laguz are defeated, until a delayed _idiot_ General who had ignored Zelgius’ words that the laguz would go straight for a heavily-defended beorc settlement, arrives with reinforcements.

Zelgius escapes without a single scratch, and he takes his helm off for the first time when he visits the bedsides of his men. They are stunned by how young he is, but their loyalty is impeccable. The letters from Sienne come two weeks later, carried on wyvernback—

The other general is to be demoted for his lack of preparation and his actions leading to the deaths of nearly three thousand men. Zelgius is to be promoted to take his place: for strategy, for saved lives, for a massacre of sub-humans monsters intending to kill the law-abiding, goddess-fearing citizens of Begnion. He receives lauds, laurels.

He is recalled back to Sienne in glory, to be Knighted into the upper echelons of Begnion society, the youngest (ha!) General on the Council of the Shield, the five Generals who run the entire army. One step closer. Zelgius knows, before all is done, that he will sit at the head of that council, and every move he makes, every war he starts, will be for Sephiran. Everything will be for Sephiran.

He returns, after eight grueling months, to Sienne. The last three days on the road, he breaks from the army and makes his own way, twice as fast. He _needs_ to be home. He needs to see Sephiran. It’s a primal, raw agony deep in his chest. He knows, logically, that his Sage is fine. Unharmed. He is safe as houses in Sienne, the foiled assassination attempt the year before having scared off all but the most enterprising Senators. But he still cannot still himself from rushing home.

He arrives back in Sienne on a clear, late-autumn day, a cool breeze cutting through the city, the sky cloudless and sunny. He is shown without hesitation into Sephiran’s quarters, to his office, and Zelgius pauses outside his door, shifting from foot to foot. Alone in the antechamber, he lifts his hand and knocks, once.

“Enter,” Sephiran’s voice says, muffled by the stone wall and the wooden door, and Zelgius turns the knob, steps inside. The clank of his armor is loud in the quiet of Sephiran’s office—he has a small fountain, that bubbles softly, but aside from that and the scratch of his pen as he writes the room is completely silent. He looks up, just as Zelgius reaches up and undoes the clasps on his helmet, lifts it off.

Sephiran sets down his pen, and the clack of it is loud in the muffled order of his office. He stands up, so fast he almost knocks his chair over, grabs it, catching it before it falls to the floor. “I was not expecting you for two more days,” Sephiran says, and Zelgius steps forward slightly, sets his helmet on Sephiran’s desk.

“I rushed,” he admits, as Sephiran steps to his side, sets a hand on his chest, just over his heart upon his breastplate. “I needed to see you.” He cannot, even to himself, answer _why_ it was so vital. But he has missed Sephiran like a sliced limb severed from his body.

“I am afraid we will have to become quite used to this,” Sephiran tells him. He seems sad as he says it. “If you are to be General, your place will no longer be alone at my side.” Zelgius knows this, of course.

Zelgius replies: “The place of a sword is bared in war, not rusting in a sheath.” Sephiran stares at him, and Zelgius can see it in his face, the look he has come to treasure greater than any gold or jewels—the look that Sephiran gets when he has been forced, through necessity or surprise, to reevaluate everything that he thought he knew about Zelgius, and build him up anew. “Be it here or afar, it is your hand that wields me.”

Sephiran looks at him, and Zelgius—

Zelgius wants so very, very badly to kiss him.

“My sword,” Sephiran murmurs, almost lilting. “My shield.” With _wonderment._

“May I kiss you?” Zelgius asks. Sephiran smiles, all soft and sad, instead of replying. He presses his other hand to Zelgius’ breastplate, leans up into him, and shuts his eyes. He does not need to answer. Zelgius knows.

When Zelgius kisses him, the whole world comes together. It just _fits_ , in a way nothing else ever has. Kissing Sephiran is all the parts of himself he thought he might never know again. Sephiran leans into him, hands on his chest, and Zelgius reaches to cup the back of his neck, the base of his skull. He wishes he was not wearing gauntlets and gloves and armor padding, so he could feel the warmth of Sephiran’s skin, the softness of his hair. This close, Zelgius can smell the very soft scent of down that sticks to him like a second skin, hidden under cologne to keep his wings a secret. He can feel Sephiran’s heartbeat, high and quick in his throat, like a bird’s.

“Sephiran,” Zelgius says into his mouth, and Sephiran leans more into him, and whispers, so that it is lost in his lips, opening his mouth into their kiss—

“No.”

Of course.

Zelgius presses their foreheads together, and sobs it aloud for the first time, in benediction, in confession.

“ _Lehran._ ”

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr, twitter @jonphaedrus


End file.
